A Travel & Culture Blog For People Who Hate Tourists

Month: July 2016

Before Rio de Janeiro became a Zika-ridden crime wave of feces-laden water, bankruptcy and corruption just before the 2016 Summer Olympics, it was a paradise for the rich and famous. A young actor, body-builder and creepy man named Arnold Schwarzenegger made a tourism promotional video for this South American paradise.

WARNING: Contains strong ass shaking and Austrian accents

Here are the uncomfortable lines said by Arnold. This is per-Terminator, Total Recall, Governor of California and noted philanderer:

During carnival, gorgeous mulatto bodies move in ways that even a fitness expert like myself can’t believe.

“Women believe the central part of the body is the ass.” I agree with the Brazilian point of view. In America, it’s the breast.

You know something, after watching the mulattoes shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the ass.

When you let it happen, you get into very quickly. (He then begins to dry hump a dancer.)

Are you friggin’ kidding me? The luggage you sit on and zip through an airport. What could possibly go wrong?

As we all know, walking through an airport while dragging your luggage that has four wheels is so June 2016. Yeah, old man, booooooo on you walking upright like a normal human being. It’s July 2016, we pop wheelies with our motorized luggage like a baller.

This chicanery comes from an Indiegogo campaign for Modobag. It boasts that it’s 3x faster than walking. Yeahhhhh. That means you can get to the two-hour wait at the TSA line two minutes faster while knocking over little children and looking like a complete douchebag.

Speaking of douchebag, you remember all the way back to December 2015 and hoverboards. All of the USA airlines banned them. The main reason is that they are stupid and impractical.

Now imagine taking the Modobag in an airport, which if you have noticed lately, are crowded. You might be able to ride 50 feet before you have to take escalators or wait in a line. The amount of time you take to sit your ass down, turn it on and ride around avoiding other people, you could have just walked there.

All this stupidity will cost your $995 plus shipping. It’s the size of a carry-on at 22 x 9 x 14, rechargeable and comes with GPS tracking so you see it on your phone as somebody rides away with it.

The political focus of the United States turns to Philadelphia this week. It’s that city where it’s always sunny, where Elton John sings about the freedom and where countless visitors run up the steps of the Art Museum like Rocky.

Having grown up outside of the city, I’ve always had a strong affiliation for it. I love championing it as an international destination. It ranks as the 13th most-visited city in the nation by foreign tourists, which could be better. It’s not as sexy or exotic as NYC, Washington D.C., Orlando, Las Vegas, San Francisco, the Grand Canyon or Los Angeles. On top of that, Philly gets a bad rap for its insane sports fans, the Brooklyn South/6th Borough of New York storyline and for having a truly deplorable airport.

For my international readers, I would like to highlight how Philadelphia is the sandwich capital of the world, which I hope the tourism bureau would get behind. They like to show it’s historical landmarks, family-friendly activities and romantic weekends for couples. Nah, it’s all about the sandwiches.

Yes, the Philly Cheesesteak and its brother from another sandwich, the roast pork with broccoli rabe, are what tourists seek out. I wouldn’t fault a group of Japanese tourists heading straight from the airport to visit Pat’s King of Steaks or the Reading Terminal Market.

For me, the Italian Hoagie is what represents the city best and it’s rich Italian-American heritage. You have prosciutto, capacola, salami, provolone, veggies, oil, vinegar and spices on soft and crusty torpedo roll. Hit up any stand in the Italian market and you’ll satisfy your fix.

If you have a foreign friend coming in and you want to do as the locals do, I say take them to Wawa. Mashable had a story about the Cult of Wawa, which explains the local devotion to the convenience store chain. It’s a comfort zone where you know you’ll get a great deal on gasoline, a 10-inch sandwich you build for $6 that beats anything Subway can do, an array of candy and junk food and each location is clean and filled with friendly staffers.

My take is that I take my coffee seriously. I go out of my way to avoid Starbucks, embrace micro-roasters and seek out the pretentious hipster barista who makes latte art. For some reason, Wawa coffee is fucking amazing. It’s low on acidity, doesn’t taste burnt or artificial, drinks easily and the flavor is bold without being over-powering.

I highly endorse taking selfies in front of a Wawa in Philadelphia and baffle your friends back in other parts of the world.

In the most New Yorky-ist thing of the summer, a pop-up museum has open in the Meatpacking district of New York City dedicated to ice cream. You can dive into a pool of rainbow sprinkles (or jimmies as I call them), which I’m sure is highly educational. Along with the ice cream related art and history, there will be tastings and sundae creations.

I yawn in their general direction, because I’ve been to an Ice Cream City. In my world, cities are much bigger than museums.

If you head to the Toshima area of Tokyo, you’ll find the mega-mall and entertainment complex Sunshine City. Inside here is a theme-park called Namja Town. As far as I could tell, Namja’s mascot was a carton ninja cat named Najavu, which what you should expect from Japanese culture. Looking at the official website, the cat also wear a top hat, so maybe there’s a lot of cosplay for this feline. There’s a section of this theme park called Ice Cream City.

If you want to find the hidden weird and wonderful of Tokyo, then this is the place to seek out. I had a lot of trouble finding Sunshine City to begin with. Then once I got to it, I went floor to floor trying to find this theme park. You would think finding a theme park in a mall would be easy. I was just about to give up when I finally found it the farthest away from the main entrance.

Like a lot of things in Japan, you have to buy your ticket from a vending machine. Once inside Namja Town, you’re greeted with several other food options like Gyoza Stadium, which is a misnomer because eight food counters that just serve dumplings does not make a stadium.

A lot of the Namja Town defies description or explanation, mainly because the language barrier and the batshit crazy nature of a Tokyo playland designed by a 13-year old Japanese child high on sugar. As far as I could tell, kids played through a scavenger hunt-like puzzle game throughout the indoor park. They get a decorator ring of some sort, there’s a haunted forest and general obnoxious j-pop music for kids blaring through the whole place.

In any event, I was there for Ice Cream City. Like the Stadium, it was five counters of ice cream confections where you can get insane combination of sundaes. Since English was nowhere to be found, I didn’t want to start an international incident of chocolate sauce.

As much as I wanted to buy something that Augustus Gloop would go to town on, I went to the Ice Cream Hall of Fame section. Here they had 100 variety of ice cream cups with every flavor you can imagine. When I write “every flavor you can imagine” I mean “use your imagination”. There’s goofy names like Vampire’s Blood and Happy Puppy’s Delight, but I aimed for a happy medium with the flavors. I went with Garlic, Cheddar Cheese Risotto, Scotch and Red Wine. Hmmm, I can taste the artificial flavoring like it was yesterday.

I had read about Ice Cream City during my research of absurdly strange things to do in Tokyo. Obviously, you can seek out the cosplayers in Harajuku, the endless arcades, the pachinko parlors and the funky gadgets in the Akihabara section of the city. If you’re up for a little adventure and a “WTF is this?” diversion, then a land of ice cream is waiting for you.

As you know, Hollywood has recycled another film from our youth in the form of Ghostbusters. The original was one of my favorite films growing up, and the new one, had it’s moments.

It’s also one of the most iconic New York-based movies. Tourists like running out of the New York Public Library like Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis did and pose with the lions flanking the building. You also have other great New York landmarks like Lincoln Center, Columbia University, Tavern on the Green, Central Park West and their headquarters on Varick and Moore Street.

While the new movie nods to the original and was filmed partially in NYC, the majority of the locations and constructed sets were in Boston. WHAAAAATTTT. What did you think would have caused more of an uproar — the new all-female cast or having the movie set in Boston instead of New York? Definitely, Boston. It would add another dimension to the New York v. Boston feud.

It happens often where other cities, like Toronto or Vancouver, stand in for New York, and it never works. The worst offender is the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Who knew NYC had big hills to drive down?

While seeing the new Ghostbusters, towards the end when our heroes celebrate their victory — oh, you thought they would all die, spoiler alert, they win — I instantly recognized the location. It’s the popular historic German beer hall Jacob Wirth. I could tell with the beer taps lining the wall.

Since 1868, the traditional beer hall has been serving boots of German beers, buckets of big pretzels and massive portions of schnitzel. You have on tap Spaten, Warsteiner, Hofbrau and Franziskaner alongside of their house brewed dark and light beer.

The place is a great communal meeting place for old timers, local business people, happy hour revelers and visitors. It is not known if Jacob Worth’s ghost haunts the joint, but if it did, there’s always a chance for a Ghostbusters II remake.

In honor of Melania Trump and the Republican National Convention, I will “borrow” text from this post from Yelp, TripAdvisor and other travel websites.

Four score and seven sandwiches ago, Melt in Cleveland, Ohio provided visitors with heaping helpings of cheesey goodness that defied sandwich convention. These things are so huge that they are delegates during the convention.

With seven locations around Ohio, Melt is the hands down (more like hands up) king of grilled cheese sandwiches in America. It lives the cliche that if you haven’t visited a Melt location, then you really didn’t go to Cleveland.

I have a feeling after people watch the new Clint Eastwood movie, Sully, people will start paying attention to the airlines flight safety videos.

As you know, America’s Sweetheart Tom Hanks plays Miracle on the Hudson pilot Chesley Sullenberger . As you see in the trailer, the movie will focus on the aftermath, when US Airways questioned his course of action. It’s like a real-life version of Denzel Washington movie, Flight.

I’m interested if they explore how pilots, the most important person on your flight and whom you’ll barely see in your travels, are under constant stress to meet flight times for little pay. On top of that, they have to be sky cops when passengers get out of hand.

I remember that day (January 15, 2009), but didn’t get to see the plane floating in the Hudson. What amazed me was the flight took off, had a bird strike, landed on the water and passengers were on the wing in less than six minutes. That’s not even enough time to go through the SkyMall catalogue.

Which leads me to the cutesy flight safety videos that Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, Delta and Air New Zealand show their passengers. In the past two years, I’ve seen the Virgin America all-singing, all-dancing safety videos eight times. When shit goes down, I’m going to be dancing and singing my way to safety.